Frank Rich on the National Circus: The NSA Ruling Was a Heartening Moral Victory—and Not Much Else

Every week, New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich talks with contributor Eric Benson about the biggest stories in politics and culture. This week: A federal judge rules against the NSA, John Boehner rants against the tea party, and this year’s Oscar films prove Hollywood can still make qualitywork.

On Monday, Federal District Judge Richard J. Leon, a George W. Bush appointee, ruled that the NSA’s metadata collection was likely in violation of the Fourth Amendment, the first legal defeat for the program unmasked by Edward Snowden. This is a preliminary injunction, and it’s not going to force an immediate change in NSA surveillance. (Appeals will almost certainly drag it to the Supreme Court.) Still, does itmatter?

For anyone who is outraged by the NSA’s egregious snooping, Leon’s ruling was a heartening moral victory: His own outrage at our government’s “almost Orwellian” technology — I’d drop the “almost” — gave eloquent and official voice to the NSA’s critics. But as a practical matter, Leon’s action has no effect, and there’s no known reason to hope that his ruling will be upheld once it lands in the Roberts court. And beyond the legal issues, there’s the political question: Is a large enough segment of the American public angry enough to demand that its leaders start guarding its privacy? Or is a citizenry that thinks nothing of yielding its secrets daily to social media and shopping portals already so deeply cocooned by an Orwellian culture that it is too docile, too drugged by the joys of public narcissism and consumer convenience to protest? The fact remains that the Democratic Establishment (typified by Barack Obama in the White House and Dianne Feinstein, the intelligence guru of the Senate) countenances the NSA’s activities. The president’s promise of reforms in the New Year — in response to an as-yet-unrevealed report by a panel of experts — sounds hollow. The GOP national-security Establishment that congregates in TheWall Street Journal opinion section is just as vehement in defending government surveillance. So is some of the so-called liberal media: Witness last Sunday’s 60 Minutes’ lengthy report (not by Lara Logan but by John Miller, soon to join Bill Bratton in Bill de Blasio’s police hierarchy) that was essentially an NSA apologia. So who in the political arena is going to take on the fight against government snooping? Let’s not forget that the lawsuit that prompted Leon’s ruling came from a fringe player: Larry Klayman, a longtime “lunatic” (in the apt epithet of Jeffrey Toobin), birther and tea party firebrand who has called Obama a “half-Muslim, anti-white, socialist fraud.” If Klayman is by default the most effective protector of civil liberties in America, we’re in even more trouble than we hadthought.

Last week, House Speaker John Boehner decided to get his feelings about the tea party off his chest, ranting to reporters that hard-right groups had “lost all credibility.” His anger was sparked by those groups’ criticism of the Patty Murray–Paul Ryan budget compromise he supported. But clearly Boehner’s patience had been wearing thin for a while. The tea party patriots returned fire by blasting the reliably right-wing congressman as a “tax-and-spend liberal.” You’ve argued before that the GOP’s hard-liners are its future and its power. Will Boehner regret dissing his party’s most ferventfollowers?

Boehner had nothing to lose, and few doubt that his perch in the House is secure. What’s been most interesting about his long-overdue public expression of anti-tea-party pique is that so many commentators have suddenly noticed that, hey, there is a civil war in the Republican Party, and they have regarded his outburst as some kind of turning point. That civil war has been going on for a long time, and Boehner’s bombast is no turning point. The state of play remains unchanged. To reiterate: the tea party is not a fringe group in the GOP – it is the base of the GOP. It has the passion, the ideological conviction, the foot soldiers, and plenty of money (not just from the Koch Brothers) to force the Establishment to its knees. Indeed, even as Boehner was supposedly putting his party’s radicals in their place, they were pulling strings on Capitol Hill. All three senators considered likely presidential aspirants in 2016 – Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, and Ted Cruz – voted with the radical right against the modest Ryan-Murray budget compromise that’s been hailed as some kind of bipartisan breakthrough. So did Boehner’s Establishment counterpart, Mitch McConnell, who needs to protect his right flank from a serious primary challenge from a tea partier as he seeks reelection next year. Boehner can rant against the hard right as much as he wants, and belatedly deplore the tactics that led to the government shutdown, but those forces remain as dug in and powerful as ever within the GOP. They could threaten another shutdown as soon as March, when the next deadline for a debt-ceiling extension isexpected.

Last Oscar season, you praised Hollywood for producing four films — Django Unchained, Lincoln, Argo, and Zero Dark Thirty — that “provoked animated, often rancorous public debate.” Outside of 12 Years a Slave, this year’s likely Oscar crop seems to have generated fewer headlines and think pieces (although many have been lavishly praised). What do you make of this year’s awards-seasonfavorites?

I think that 2013 is a remarkable year for American movies. Over the weekend, I went to three in a row that I admired greatly (I list them in no particular order): Alexander Payne’s Nebraska, Joel and Ethan Coen’s Inside Llewyn Davis, and David O. Russell’s American Hustle. None of them have subjects that might inspire op-ed think pieces, and indeed that’s one thing I love about them: They are deeply idiosyncratic films about characters who live on the edge or fall through society’s cracks and who are often unsympathetic. All three are gorgeously made and acted and eschew sentimentality. They have all been well reviewed, but a number of my friends don’t like Llewyn Davis: its protagonist, a drifting, narcissistic folk singer in the pre-Dylan Village bohemia of the early sixties, treats almost everyone shabbily or even cruelly, and the film’s structure seems as rambling as a folk song with countless verses. Yet the Coens portray the guy with an inscrutable sympathy that stops you from dismissing him – so much so I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the film in the three days since I sawit.

Maybe this confluence of good movies is a passing coincidence — I have no idea — but for the moment I can’t remember seeing a run of American movies this bracing since I was a film critic in the sevenites, when every week seemed to bring a startling new work by Scorsese or Altman or Coppola or Spielberg or Ashby (among others). And to think that this season there are still new films by Scorsese (The Wolf of Wall Street) and Spike Jonze (Her) to look forward to. Not to mention the not-so-guilty pleasure of Anchorman 2! Perhaps none of these movies are noble enough in civic virtue to inspire punditry, but they are collectively a startling sign of cultural health and vitality in an art form that was thought to have ceded much of its seriousness to top-tiertelevision.

The Pentagon is set to begin a drawdown of its 5,800 troops from the Southwest border as early as this week, the Army commander overseeing the mission told POLITICO today — even as the approaching caravan of refugees prompted U.S. customs officers to close a port of entry near Tijuana, Mexico.

All the active-duty troops that President Donald Trump ordered sent to the border before the midterm elections should be home by Christmas, said Army Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan, who is running the mission from San Antonio, Texas.

A shooting at a Chicago hospital has wounded multiple people, including a suspect and a police officer, authorities said.

Shots were fired Monday afternoon at Mercy Hospital on the city’s South Side, and officers were searching the facility. Police issued a statement on Twitter saying there were “reports of multiple victims.”

A witness named James Gray told Chicago television station ABC 7 that he saw multiple people shot: “It looked like he was turning and shooting people at random.”

From @presssec: new rules for reporters at WH press conferences.- one question per reporter, then yield floor and microphone.- followup question “may be permitted.” Then yield floor and microphone.- “failure to abide” may result in suspension/revocation” of WH press pass.

so, the conventional wisdom on election night was that democrats had not achieved the resounding repudiation of president trump they were looking for. yes, they’d won the house, but not overwhelmingly. and progressive favorites stacey abrams, andrew gillum, and beto o’rourke had gone down to defeat. meanwhile, republicans had made slight gains in the senate. a few days later, the thinking shifted in Democrats’ favor, as more late-breaking results came in from various states, especially california, which is notoriously slow at counting ballots, and where the party did extremely well. we’re not almost two weeks out from the election, enough time to look at things more dispassionately. how do you rate the performance now?

Trying to get away from the endless and interminable and redundant arguments over how to define a “wave.”

Benjamin Hart3:10 PM

yes, I agree, there is little more tedious than parsing what defines a wave

Ed Kilgore3:11 PM

Democrats won the House popular vote and picked up 37 or 38 seats. Dems won 22 of 34 Senate races (with one in Mississippi still to go), and by just about any measure, more Senate votes. And they picked up seven net governorship and seven state legislative chambers.

Part of the problem is that an insanely pro-GOP Senate landscape made a good Democratic performance look bad.

And the other problem was sky-high Democratic expectations, plus the overwhelming attention given to close races in Florida, Georgia and Texas.

Which all went Republican.

Benjamin Hart3:13 PM

yes, and the pressure to prematurely label the evening one way or another, which is endemic to election coverage (and which I don’t see going away any time soon)

the other thing, I think, is that trump is such an outlier of a person and president that some people view anything less than a sweeping rejection the likes of which we’ve never seen before as a bit of a letdown

Ed Kilgore3:14 PM

Yeah, the commentariat has not adjusted well to the slow counts that ever-increasing voting-by-mail plus provisional ballots have introduced.

As for Trump, I guess part of the polarization over him is that it’s hard for partisans to interpret anything that happens as anything other than total victory or defeat for MAGA. And the MSM tends to respond with quick judgments of a “split decision,” which is very misleading.

Benjamin Hart3:20 PM

yep. haven’t seen TOO much of that since the election, to be fair. but back to the actual gains made by dems, which it’s easy to lose track of amid the hundreds of results. what do you think was their most important victory other than winning the House? for me, it might have been knocking off scott walker in wisconsin.

Ed Kilgore3:23 PM

Guess it depends on your interpretation of “important.” If you mean “soul-satisfying for progressives,” then yeah, finally taking down the guy who had most consistently applied the worst kind of conservative policies to a previously progressive state was a very big deal.

Sweeping Orange County, California’s congressional seats was another big deal emotionally, particularly for those of us old enough to remember O.C. as a John Birch Society hotbed.

From a more practical point of view, all those congressional wins mattered–first, as part of a House takeover, and second, as a foundation for (maybe) a Dem reconquest of the Senate in 2020.

And the gubernatorial and state legislative gains will help with the next round of redistricting, though there’s some unfinished business on that front in 2020.

As I’ve argued at some length, even some losses were important for Dems–particularly the Florida and Georgia gubernatorial elections and the Texas Senate race. They showed that finally “national Democrats” (including African-Americans) can do better in the former Confederacy than Blue Dogs–at least in states with the requisite combination of a large minority vote and some upscale suburbs.

Benjamin Hart3:29 PM

yes, and that may also have big repercussion in terms of what kind of candidate democrats want to nominate in 2020

Ed Kilgore3:30 PM

Well, it certainly reinforces the idea that there’s a “sunbelt strategy” for 2020 that could work as an alternative to Democrats obsessing about the Rust Belt states Trump carried.

Benjamin Hart3:31 PM

right – arizona and georgia really could be in play

and, of course, florida

Ed Kilgore3:31 PM

And North Carolina.

Benjamin Hart3:31 PM

right.

so, all in all, a democratic party that is somewhat addicted to being traumatized should be feeling pretty good

Ed Kilgore3:35 PM

Yeah. There were some painful near-misses, but not really much grounds for a struggle-for-the-soul-of-the-party thing. That’s good, since Democrats will need all their energy to winnow their 40-candidate presidential field.

A Florida elections expert digs into what went wrong for Democrats on Tuesday

This election was the third consecutive Governor’s race decided by a point or less, bracketing two consecutive Presidential elections decided by a point. This drives homes two points: One, Florida, for all its dynamic growth and demographic changes, is very stable; and Two, when organizations like Quinnipiac try to peddle off polls showing candidates in Florida with 6-point leads, or 9-point leads, you now know what to do with that information (a post/rant on public polling is coming soon).

There are a lot of reasons why Florida is very competitive…but it is what it is. Big chunks of Florida cancel each other out, and both parties have large, and quite dug-in bases – and neither have a base that alone gets them to 50% + 1. Winning Florida (or losing it) is about managing the margins throughout Florida.

16 Democratic representatives signed a letter opposing Nancy Pelosi for House speaker … but she still has no announced challenger

… Pelosi could lose as many as 15 Democratic votes when she stands for election as speaker on Jan. 3. One of the 16 signers, Ben McAdams (Utah), is now trailing Rep. Mia Love (R-Utah) and might never cast a speaker vote.

Not signing the letter is Rep. Marcia L. Fudge (D-Ohio), who has publicly opposed Pelosi and is now mulling a run against her. Fudge said Friday she would not make a final decision on whether to run until next week at the earliest.

Another five Democrats — Rep. Conor Lamb (Pa.) and Reps.-elect Jason Crow (Colo.), Jared Golden (Maine), Mikie Sherrill (N.J.) and Abigail Spanberger (Va.) — have made firm statements saying they would not vote for Pelosi but did not sign the letter.

stacey abrams and andrew gillum both conceded their elections this weekend to their republican opponents after protracted post-election battle. realistically, did either of them have any other option but to call it quits?

Zak Cheney-Rice11:47 AM

I think with Gillum the outcome was more or less decided on election night. His race was always more of a long shot than Bill Nelson’s reelection bid — the other high-profile Florida contest that dragged on into last week — and was never as close as that one. But I think it’s important to note that Abrams was pretty intentional about not conceding, in the traditional sense. She basically said, in so many words, that Kemp’s victory would have to stand because she saw no other available legal recourse available. I think she knew her options included dragging this out longer, but also knew that, legally, there wasn’t much she could do to alter the outcome.

But she has said she will continue to pursue issues around election integrity in Georgia, and I think that will include several (more) legal challenges to Kemp’s win, or at least to the mechanisms that facilitated it

Benjamin Hart11:48 AM

yes, she did not praise kemp, and called his win “legal” but refused to say that he was “legitimate” when asked by jake tapper

Zak Cheney-Rice11:52 AM

Yeah the question of legitimacy seems to be a sticking point for a lot of folks. There’s a Slate piece (https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/11/georgia-stacey-abrams-brian-kemp-election-not-stolen.html) circulating today arguing that we shouldn’t describe the Georgia election as “stolen,” and the first reason listed is because it could lead more and more people to see American elections as illegitimate. But I think the cat is pretty far out the bag on that one. He’s out and running down the street. I live in Atlanta and there are piles of little cards littering the streets around Piedmont Park (the city’s Central Park equivalent) that read, “Stolen Votes.” There are many, many people who believe this election was ill-gotten. So yeah, I think it is fair to say this wasn’t a legitimate win by plenty of metrics.

I’m not sure what group — activist, political, or otherwise — created the cards, to be clear. But it expresses a widely held sentiment.

Benjamin Hart11:57 AM

yeah, I have to say I’ve been on the other side on that debate – while I think kemp is a dirty character and absolutely employed the underhanded tactics we’ve all heard about, “stolen” struck me as a rhetorical bridge too far, for the reasons that a) it’s an escalation that I’m not sure is useful in the wider context of institutional delegitimization that republicans are pushing and b) we don’t actually KNOW if kemp’s actions swung the election, though we can suspect they did. I’m interested to hear you say otherwise, though.

Zak Cheney-Rice12:07 PM

I think it’s a useful and accurate frame, but it definitely has a veneer of plausible deniability because so much of what goes into “stealing” these elections takes place long before election day. Brian Kemp can always point to the fact that he’s acting well within the law, but it’s important to note these are laws he and/or his party created, likely for this very purpose. If you disenfranchise more than a million people — often for quibbling bureaucratic irregularities — and do so in a way that pretty transparently targets those whose lives are already beset by instability and unpredictability around housing, transportation, and employment, you are essentially creating the electorate you want. In Republicans’ case, that electorate is one skewed toward maintaining white, and conservative, power, at the expense of black voters, young voters, and poor voters (all of which often overlap). So the question of “theft,” it seems to me, is purely rhetorical. In our technical, traditional understanding of elections, we would not necessarily describe elections that took place in the Jim Crow South as “stolen.” But if roughly half of the Jim Crow South’s electorate is either barred from voting outright or forced to navigate an insane labyrinth of inconveniences, barriers, and sometimes outright violence to cast their ballots, it’s a stretch to describe that as legitimate, either.

That is, of course, a matter of differing scale. But it doesn’t take much to tip an election like Kemp-Abrams.

Also, it’s not our job as voters to keep falsely believing our elections are “legitimate” when clearly, in several key ways, the evidence suggests otherwise.

That distinction is earned.

Benjamin Hart12:12 PM

all good and useful points. but I do think the phraseology matters. would you say that the florida election was stolen because of the state’s disenfranchisement of felons?

Zak Cheney-Rice12:24 PM

It does matter, I think, but I haven’t found any of the arguments that dismiss such phrasing as extreme, or bemoan how it sows mistrust in our systems, to be especially convincing. I do believe that locking up black people at disproportionate rates, then ensuring they cannot vote even after they’ve done time, is doing the same work that racist voter suppression does by all the means listed above. It is stealing their right to vote, plain and simple. I think we can have a nuanced discussion about whether that means elections are being “stolen” outright or not (I tend to lean toward yes) but at the end of the day I think the more pressing issue is that we are building our democracy by ensuring people who should be able to vote cannot, and that we perhaps need more urgent language to describe the actual stakes there.

The California union that provided major funding for successful ballot campaigns to expand Medicaid in three red states this year is already looking for where to strike next to expand Obamacare coverage in the Donald Trump era.

Leaders of SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West declined to identify which states they might target in 2020. But the six remaining states where Medicaid could be expanded through the ballot are on the group’s radar: Florida, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Wyoming.

NEW: CNN asks court for an emergency hearing Monday afternoon, as the White House still plans to boot CNN correspondent Jim Acosta, despite court order that reinstated the journalist. https://t.co/vrmtazbgcI